WILD DOGS

Greymouth Evening Star, 3 November 1923, Page 3

WILD DOGS

AUSTRALIAN MENACE. When the Wanaaring Pastor aliSuS Protection Board recently appealed for financial aid from Pastoralists to exterminate the wild dogs the only man who stood out was Sir Sidney Kidman (writes AVill Lawson), l‘or this reason, land because, wherever he aggregates land, the wild dogs increase, he is becoming known as ‘Wild Dog Kidman.” It is claimed that Kidman now owns a wide tract of territory extending from Hungerlord on the Queensland border to Broken Hill—looo miles long and 200 broad. In New South AVales he owns 3,000,000 acres, and he also has some in Queensland and South Australia!, where the /corners .'of those States join New South AVales. On all that wide tract of land it is estimated there are scarcely a score of people, including blacks.

The coming of Kidman into ownership means the passing of the sheep and ;Mie introduction of cr/ttle. Fences are levelled, buildings allowed to rot. The back country of Australia. is being given over to Kidman, cattle and the wild dog. When the sheepmen were there the wild dogs were a menace. They were one of the factors that drove the sheepman out—added to the extraordinary spell of droughty years, it was thought that no wild dog would attack the cattle.

“A cow that cannot protect her calf isn’t worth anything.” Sidney Kidman is reported to have said. But the wild dogs are getting Kidman’s

calves, and now he is beginning to squeal. But he will not pay a levy to the .Wanaaring Pastoralists’ Protection Board. He demands (that the Government shall do it. It is strange country, this back-o’-bevond, or “out at the back of Bourke,” as AVill Ogilvie put it. Immense level plains stretch away into the sunset. For 800 miles westward those plains extend, with wilga and brigelo.w and gidya and coolibah and other stunted trees to break the monotony and add to the mystery. The soil is good, but rainfalls are unreliable. Still, it is good sheep country for bores can be sunk with little expense. The coaches of old and the motor services of to-day have made roads across the black soil plains. These roads are as hard as iron when there is no rain. AVhen rain falls they are quagmires or slippery surfaces. Yet, who cares, for rain out west means money to every man.

Tn this country the wild dog roams unchecked. Mostly they are big brinclle animals, a. cross oetween the dingo and kelpie sheep dog, with a dash of kangaroo dog. Fortunately, the main parents are not agressive animals. Were it otherwise the tales of the Marsupial tigers and the tiger of Tautanoola. woufd be eclipsed by actual encounters with mankind. But the wild dog, which never barks, slinks into the scrub when a man passes. He kills for the lust of killing, tearing the tails and entrails out of sheep in a way that the pure dingo never did. The kea after the kidney fat is not comparable with the Australian wild dog’s mutilation of the sheen.

With outback Australia as one 1000mile long cattle-walk, the increase and multiplication of the wild dog is inevitable unless a combined attack is made on them. They have ventured .in within two miles of Bourke, which shows that they are growing cheeky. In other directions they have appeared in the Lachlan in the amazing numbers that prevail outback.

If cattle-farming prevails out West there is not the slighest doubt, that the wild dog and the wild blackfellow will increase, and Australia, will go back, so far as that area, is concerned, into earlv Victorian conditions.